Is This the Life You Would Choose?

At TMC this week we’re enjoying the privilege of hearing capable theologian and church historian Stephen Nichols in chapel as we lead up to Reformation Day.  One of the joys of my new position is the undeserved opportunity to spend time with visiting speakers.  After chapel on Wednesday, the Student Life Directors enjoyed an informal brunch with Dr. Nichols at the Egg Plantation.  I want to share about him and especially his Wednesday message because it was so refreshing to hear a proven church historian speak accurately, biblically, clearly, and movingly about a historical figure in a way that inspired me to live well in my own day.  This was not just facts and dates bracketed by the years of a man’s life and death.  This was a living, breathing video of one more saint who stands in the cloud of witnesses.  It’s worth sharing.

With a Ph.D. from Westminster Theological Seminary and a number of church-serving books to his name, Dr. Nichols is the Research Professor of Christianity and Culture at Lancaster Bible College and Graduate School in Pennsylvania.  He teaches only two classes and spends much of his time researching and writing, for which we should all be thankful.  In his thirties and with three young children, he blends historical insight, theological intelligence, and relational warmth into an engaging and insightful personality.  Our brunch was like hanging out with a very normal, very warm, and very bright friend.

But the real purpose of this post is to share my notes from his Wednesday message on John Calvin, whose 500th birthday we’re celebrating this year.  The message was a rare combination of historical accuracy, biblical exposition, and contemporary relevance that fed my soul and inspired me to be all of who I ought to be and more than who I am.

Is This the Life You Would Choose?

• Your mother dies when you’re three years old.
• You reluctantly enter the ministry.
• You are unpaid for your first eight months.
• After two years in the ministry which you entered reluctantly, you’re voted out.
• You marry, and your son dies in infancy.
• As a result, your wife is plagued by illness, and she is bedridden for half of your marriage.
• She dies after nine years of marriage.
• At fifty, you have gout, intestinal parasites, and tuberculosis.
• You often have to be carried to the pulpit or the lectern to preach.
• You endure six weeks of intense pain before you die at fifty-five.

Would you want this marriage, this ministry, this life?

In Exodus 33:12-19, shortly after the golden calf incident where the Israelites prove their faithlessness with a blatant display of idolatry, their leader Moses appeals to God, pleading for His presence and asking that God reveal Himself personally in a special way.  God answers Moses’ prayer and proclaims His glory to Moses.  Yet God does not reveal Himself in the abstract.  He opens wide His glory to Moses in the context of the Israelites’ outright rebellion and Moses’ demanding circumstances, and He tells Moses specific things about Himself.

• God is present.
• God knows us.
• God is omnibenevolent (a term coined by theologian Alistair McGrath expressing the “all-goodness” of God).
• God is gracious.  Jonathan Edwards wrote advice to a young girl who had been recently converted.  He told her, in Puritanesque fashion, to “never think that you lie low enough for [your sin],” yet to always remember that God’s love will always “infinitely overtop the highest mountains of our sins.”
• God is sovereign.  He is not manipulated, tricked, duped, suckered, or bribed.
• The glory of God is ultimate.

Just as Moses learned these things about God in less than ideal situations, so did Calvin.

Calvin was born on July 10, 1509 in France.  He was born into a Catholic home, as everyone was in his day.  The year he was born Luther was lecturing in Wittenburg.  Calvin was christened and put on the roles of the church, thereby entering a religious system with layer after layer of tradition obscuring the gospel, like scaffolding obscuring a beautiful building.  At thirteen he was ready for university, so he was sent to the University of Paris.  Having no desire to study theology or ministry, he chose the humanities, and did well.  He progressed to his Master’s work at the University of Orleans, and having proven himself as a bright young man, he became a lecturer at the College of Royal Lecturers from 1531-34.  During this time Calvin wrote his first book — a commentary on Seneca’s work on mercy.  He was still unconverted.

In God’s providence, Calvin roomed with a young man named Nicholas Kopp who was converted in 1531 by reading Luther.  Kopp began using their apartment to distribute Reformation ideas and literature, so Calvin was consistently breathing the air of the Reformation.  He was converted in 1534, and threw himself headlong into the cause.

At one point Kopp and Calvin became aware of plans for their apartment to be raided by the authorities, so in the spring of 1534, Calvin went on the run for a year.  In May of 1534 he went to his home church in France, crossed his name off the church role, and wrote “withdrawn.”  He later reflected (in the Preface to his Psalms commentary) that this moment was like putting an exclamation point on his conversion.  Like Luther, Calvin wrestled intensely with decisions like these.  They both realized that according to the church’s theology, if they were wrong, they were placing themselves outside of the church, and they were damned to hell.  So these were incredibly solemn decisions, not just the rash reactions of a young, idealistic radical.  Despite some of these large steps in his own personal life, the Reformation never gained a foothold in Calvin’s home country.

At this point, at twenty-six years old and a believer for one year, Calvin wrote a systematic theology.  This would end up serving as a kind of first edition for his Institutes.  He wanted to go to Strasbourg to study under well-known scholar Martin Bucer.  On the way, he spent the night in Geneva.  His host, William Farel, was active in the cause of the Reformation.  However, although Farel was good at stirring people up, he was not gifted to build, sustain, and shepherd a church.  He observed that Calvin could do what he couldn’t, and invited him to stay in Geneva, under threat of a curse (!).  Calvin reluctantly decided to stay (1536), perhaps thinking that if Farel and Geneva needed him that badly, he ought to offer his help.

For the first eight months, he received no salary, and for the first two years, the minutes of the city meetings refer to him only as “that Frenchman.”  He got a terrible toothache, which was treated with bleedings, pills, and fomentation.  Then the conflict began.  Calvin wrote to Bucer, the man he had wanted to study under in Strasbourg, “They want a preacher, not a pastor.”  He had come to see that the people of Geneva wanted to do their confessionals, take care of their venial sins, attend mass, hear an occasional homily, and go home and live however they wanted.  As they say in the south, they didn’t want someone meddling.  But Calvin was a pastor, not a distant orator.  He was a shepherd, and he was going to care about the details of their lives — he was going to meddle.

In the spring of 1538, Calvin was kicked out of Geneva.  He went to Strasbourg and met a widow named Idelette de Bure whose former Anabaptist husband Calvin had debated.  They married and had a son whom they named Jacques.  He didn’t live past one.  Due to complications, his wife was plagued for the rest of her life, and died after nine years of marriage.

Around 1540, the Catholic church swept into Geneva with threats and authority and slander and persuasion, and no one could stand up to them intellectually.  So Calvin went back in 1541, again very reluctantly.  It’s interesting that while the trip from Strasbourg to Geneva took a couple weeks at most, Calvin didn’t arrive until eight months later (Nichols suggests that this may indicate how much Calvin didn’t want to go back to Geneva).

Despite his clear statements in his writings that he would’ve never chosen Geneva on his own, Calvin stayed for the rest of his life (1541-64).  He wasn’t even given citizenship until the 1550’s, and it was in Geneva that he buried his wife.  At one point he wrote, “I do what I can to keep myself from being overcome with grief.”

During this time his writing and his ministry were prolific.  We have seven volumes of his letters along with commentaries on almost every book of the Bible.  He preached an average of seven sermons each week, served on the city council, and set up orphanages and schools.  Since his heart was in France, he and the church in Geneva trained up 2,000 students from Europe and sent them back fully funded by the city to set up underground churches in France.  In 1555, Geneva even sent two missionaries to Brazil, which was unheard of in that day.  They were killed by cannibals shortly after they arrived on shore.  Calvin was not just a scholar, but a pastor and a visionary with his hand in every aspect of the Lord’s work.

In his later years he often had to be carried to the pulpit to preach, and he died in 1564 after six weeks of intense pain.

Is This the Life You Would Choose?

God is sovereign over our lives.  This is often confused with fate, like the mythical sisters handling thread, one unraveling the thread and the other cutting it off at arbitrary points.  But this has nothing to do with sovereignty.

God is sovereignly overseeing our lives and providentially guiding our lives, and He is good in it all.  We see this so clearly in Calvin’s life.  He did not reveal Himself to Calvin in the abstract, in the generalities of life.  He taught Calvin about Himself and drew Calvin to Himself in the midst of uncertainty and pain and heartache and rejection.  And most of all, He glorified Himself through Calvin’s life.

None of us here would ever choose Calvin’s life.  But in His goodness and sovereignty, God did, and He used Calvin greatly through it.  On Friday I want to talk about how your life can be relevant five hundred years from now, not because you write books or have books written about you, but because you live and die for things that will matter five hundred years from now.

Would I Like Jesus If I Met Him?

This is a question I’ve asked myself more and more the older I’ve gotten.  It grows more haunting as the years go by, perhaps because each passing year is a big step closer to actually meeting Him.  Not that haunted is the only thing I feel when I anticipate meeting Jesus.  But you get the point.

Would I like Jesus if I met Him, here, today?  I don’t know.  I know that I’d love to meet my ultra-nice conception of Jesus with His perfect smile and soothing words and non-judgmental tone.  I know I’d like to be the child on His lap, the adulteress being forgiven, the Mary being affirmed for sitting at His feet.  But I wouldn’t want to be a compromised political ruler or an argumentative Jewish intellectual or an out-of-line disciple.  And I wouldn’t want to be me.

Sure, it’s not just His kindness that’s attractive.  I’d like to meet Him in His perfect righteousness, too, but I’d prefer that it be a long line of other people being compared to Him.  Otherwise it would be beyond awkward (for me).  It would be devastating.

Yes, I’m convinced that He’s a heroic radical for flipping tables in the temple, and I love His denunciations of the religious hypocrites.  But I’d be foolish to think that He wouldn’t flip over some of my tables if He showed up today.  And that would be embarrassing.  And I don’t like to be embarrassed.  Don’t you know that I’m respected, that I’m weighty and influential?  Everyone knows I’m not hypocritical.  In need of a tune-up and some tweaking, always, but never an overhaul.  Sure, dust the table, reorganize a few things, and send a tainted coin or two flying, but no need to overturn the whole set-up.  Yeah, there are obviously some tables on my right and left that need to be flipped, but this one just needs a couple adjustments.  Flip someone else’s tables, thank you.

What about His compassion?  Well yes, like you, I’m moved by His radical love for the poor, the handicapped, the outcast, and the marginalized.  But just because I feel comfortable reading about His 18-hour days of ministry to the dirtiest members of society doesn’t mean I’d feel comfortable if He got up in my grill about my own missionless heart and merciless priorities.  And I can’t pretend that I’m not voluntarily enslaved to man-made traditions and falsely religious principles that protect me from having to exercise mercy and compassion.  So He’d have plenty of targets to fire at, and even though I love His compassion, I wouldn’t be fond of Him pointing out my lack of it.

Of course I enjoy the stories about His run-ins with the Pharisees and Sadducees — His masterful set-ups, His clever theological arguments, His pervasive knowledge of the Old Testament.  He didn’t fear anyone, and He was never defeated.  Like you, I marvel at that.  But I don’t know how I’d like my own precious theological notions eviscerated and left lying on the ground quivering and exposed.  I’m pretty sure I would be offended to hear Him telling me that I don’t understand much about Him, that there’s so much more to learn, that I need to repent and radically change some of my views, and that that I’m really just like the disciples in my half-baked understanding.  I like to learn new things, but I don’t like being wrong, and especially publically, sharply, humiliatingly wrong.  And just because I grew up in a pastor’s home and attended a sound Christian college and seminary doesn’t mean I wouldn’t have a good amount of my theology and even more of my opinions sliced and diced by the one who is the very embodiment of the truth.

The whole boy-discussing-theology-in-the-temple is a gripping story, but I’m not sure I would want a Hebrew junior higher joining my staff meeting discussions, especially if “all who heard Him were amazed at His understanding and His answers” (Luke 2:47).  I like the idea of child prodigies as much as the next guy, but not when they’re competition.  And in that vein, I most certainly wouldn’t want the local carpenter’s son returning to town making bold Messianic statements about Himself, no matter how good of a boy He’d been growing up.  If we’re honest with ourselves, what He said in Nazareth was just over the top, and we all know it.  But somehow we act like we would’ve been the only ones seeing things clearly, the only ones truly on His side, the only ones who would “get it” — like we would’ve been the only ones who would’ve opened our minds, exercised sincere faith, put our pride aside, and embraced God’s Son.

Really?  I’m not so sure.

Watching Him intellectually undress the religious elite with simple and sharp arguments is great spiritual entertainment, but fast-forward 2,000 years and cast me as the religious hypocrite and the show’s not so fun.  I cheer Him on in the gospels, but what if He showed up on my doorstep challenging my traditions and condemning my lukewarmness and outloving and outobeying anyone I’d ever seen before?  What if, unavoidably, His light began exposing my darkness?  It’s hard to say that my own Sunday ”Hosanna!” wouldn’t turn into a Friday “Crucify!”

I’m not saying that I don’t love Jesus.  I just want to love the right one.  And yes, that statement presumes that there’s more than one Jesus, at least in our imaginations and our conceptions and our preferences.

I remember sitting on the shore of the Sea of Galilee four years ago, watching the sun setting over the Arbel Cliffs on the other side of the lake and hearing the water lap up against the shoreline.  I thought about how wonderful it was to be there, and how what I was seeing and learning was radically altering my perspective.  But I wasn’t convinced that my tour of Israel would radically alter my life.  In fact, I was convinced that in and of itself, it wouldn’t.  As my eyes moved around the north shore of the lake, something struck me, something I’ve never forgotten.  If most of the people who knew of Jesus, saw His life, observed His miracles, and heard Him teach hardened their hearts and rejected Him, how in the world did it make any sense for me to presume that simply touring the land (and sea) that He walked on would change me?  So many who knew of Him hated Him.  Why was I so convinced that I would’ve loved Him had I been alive back then, or that I would love Him now if He showed up in person?

Don’t get me wrong.  By the electing, redeeming, forgiving, sanctifying grace of God, I do love Jesus.  Not like I ought, not like I could, and not like I will, but honestly and sincerely, I do love Him.  And I know that He loves me, deeply and eternally.  The veil has been torn from top to bottom and the way to God has been opened.  Because of Christ I can now enter the presence of God boldly and with confidence.

But I don’t want to be blind.  I don’t want to be foolish.  I don’t want to be ignorant and arrogant.  The fact is, Jesus Christ is “the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of His nature.”  He came to save us, but that doesn’t mean He came to make us comfortable in our sinfulness, or that He came to affirm our personal renderings of Him.

I’m not asking you to question Christ’s love for you or even your general love for Christ.  I’m just asking you to join me in considering who Jesus really is, in all His fullness, from all the angles we see in the gospels, and then to ask if we truly love Him for who He really is, in all His fullness, from all the angles we see in the gospels.  He has some jagged edges, in case you haven’t noticed, and we don’t tend to like jagged edges, especially when they cut us up.

There was a man whom Jesus loved deeply, and who loved Jesus deeply in return.  He was quite possibly Jesus’ best human friend.  In his later years, after his friend Jesus had ascended into heaven, they had a brief reunion.  “When I saw Him, I fell at His feet as though dead” (Revelation 1:17).

Would I like Jesus if I met Him?  No — I would love Him, because of who He is and because of what He’s done for me, and in me.  But in my sinfulness, there are a lot of things about Him that I wouldn’t like at all — not because of Him, but because of me.  And the sooner I acknowledge and confess that, the better.  Better to acknowledge that I don’t like aspects of who Jesus is and to seek forgiveness and transformation than to blindly and ignorantly declare my love for a Jesus tailored to my own preferences and personality.

Yes, I want to love Jesus — just not one of my own making.

Taste and See That the Lord Is Good

Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good!
Blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him!
– Psalm 34:8

We prayed through Psalm 34 at a recent prayer meeting.  Since then I have wanted to spend some time meditating on verse 8, and have decided to do it publically here.  I am making these observations solely from the English text, though if there were time, even more nuance could be found in the Hebrew.  I’m sure I would be encouraged by your observations as well.

1. The introductory word “Oh” clearly denotes emotion and longing.  David yearns for me to experience and enjoy what he has experienced and enjoyed.  He is bursting with a passion and desire to bring others into his deep personal experience of God’s goodness.
     
2. David clearly mixes his metaphors.  He exhorts me both to “taste” and “see.”  David was a gifted poet, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he were aware that he mixed the metaphors.  But there is a richness to the mixture.  Both are sensory words — taste and sight.  They are verbs of intimate personal experience.  And in the context, the seeing comes from the tasting.  David wants me to experience God’s goodness (taste) and to thereby realize God’s goodness (see).  If I “taste” a strawberry and “see” that it is sweet, or “taste” fine chocolate and “see” that it is rich, I am having an experience that leads to a realization that over time becomes a conviction.  If you ask me if a strawberry is sweet, I will tell you, “Of course.”  If you ask me if I am sure, I will say “Absolutely.”  Why?  Because I have tasted strawberries many times, and every time they were sweet.
    
3. The verbs “taste” and “see” are both exhortations.  You could call them “commands,” but that would take away from the clear sense of eager invitation.  We tend to overuse the “command” label when looking at imperative verbs in Scripture.  Many so-called “commands” are certainly mandatory (i.e., God would be displeased if we neglected them), but often the requirement is not the emphasis.  Here, the sense is an eager invitation and an earnest exhortation.  David is not a drill sergeant barking out commands to experience the riches of God’s goodness.  He is a young poet who has been rescued from the clutches of a foreign king and cannot restrain the flow of jubilant praise coming from his heart.  He wants everyone to experience the goodness of God as he has, so he enthusiastically urges me to “taste” and “see.”
    
4. The exhortations to “taste” and “see” do not call me merely to a mental recognition of a truth or a quick acknowledgement of a theological reality or even an accurate entry in my doctrinal statement.  To “taste” is to intentionally put something in my mouth so that my tongue and my tastebuds can explode with excitement at its desirable sweetness and complimentary texture.  To “see” is to observe and to contemplate and to process and to interpret and to draw a conclusion.  Both are verbs of personal, intimate, sensory experience.
    
5. The substance David wants me to taste and the object that he wants me to see is the goodness of the LORD (“that the LORD is good”).  And it is not just His goodness, but the personally experienced, irreversibly established fact that He is good.  Of course, God is always good.  But what David longs for is that I share in his experience of God’s goodness.  David does not just want God to be good.  God is good, and David longs for me to ”taste” His goodness and to “see” His goodness.
    
6. “The LORD” is Yahweh.  This is the unique, covenantal name of God as He revealed Himself to Israel and bound Himself to her for her everlasting good.  This is appropriate here, because it is Yahweh who has rescued David from Abimelech (see the Psalm title), just as He promised to be the protector of the Israelite godly.
    
7. What characteristic of the LORD does David want me to “taste” and “see”?  The beautiful reality of His goodness.  Not in the abstract, but in concrete reality.  Not in a picture or video or dramatic re-telling, but in personal experience.  The verb “is” makes “good” a predicate adjective referring back to “the LORD.”  So ”the LORD” has an intimate connection with “good” here.  He can be defined and explained by the description “good.”  God is a benefactor.  He has my best interests in mind.  He is for me, not against me.  He is not only sovereign, with the power to do whatever He desires; He is also infinitely good, with the perfect goodness to always use that power in generous, helpful, supportive ways for me, because of Christ.  He is virtuous, honorable, and noble, at all times and in all ways.
    
8. Meditating on the word “good” in relation to God is an endless exploration of a borderless land, a swim in a bottomless ocean.  This week I hope to walk around each day simply repeating to myself, “God is good,” and turning that statement over and over in my mind.
    
9. The second half of the verse describes what David means when he says, “taste and see that the LORD is good.”  He means that I should “take refuge in Him.”  I will taste the sweetness of God’s goodness and see the riches of His goodness when I fully depend on Him for my protection and provision.
    
10. In the immediate context, David puts some contours on God’s goodness.  “Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!”  So God is “good” because God is a “refuge.”  His goodness is clearly demonstrated in His active protection of those who run under the shadow of His wings.  Earlier in the poem David has described himself as a poor man crying out to God (v. 6), and he has experienced the warmth and safety of God’s shelter.
     
11. David happily declares a blessing on “the man who takes refuge in [the LORD].”  David knows that this man will be blessed because David himself has taken refuge in the LORD and has tasted and seen that the LORD is good.  David has experienced God as his refuge, so he naturally and eagerly exhorts others to find refuge in God, and he explains the blessing they will experience as they personally discover God’s goodness.
     
12. To “take refuge” is to seek shelter, to run for protection, to wholeheartedly entrust my well-being to the power, control, and virtue of another.  It is an act of utter self-abandonment and complete dependence upon another.  It also implies external pressures and threats that have overwhelmed me so that my own ability to protect myself and provide for myself has been exhausted.  I’m at the end of my rope, and I know it.  I have no more resources, no more strategies, no more reinforcements.  I must flee, abandon my own efforts, and “take refuge.”
     
13. To “take refuge” is an emotional act.  Along with “taste” and “see,” it is a verb brimming with feeling.  But “tasting” and “seeing” are positive experiences, while the initial steps of “taking refuge” are harrowing.  If I am forced to “take refuge,” I am not making the calculating evaluation of the fortress inspector who declares that the building is satisfactory.  I am not a soldier making a peace-time observation that if the enemy gains an advantage, the fortress will be a good place to find protection.  No, I am personally driven back, beaten down, vulnerable, and exposed, and if I want to survive, I must “take refuge” someplace safe.
     
14. The prepositional phrase “in him” denotes the location where I “take refuge.”  But it is not a physical location.  There is no widely-dug moat, no steel-reinforced walls, no observation towers.  This “refuge” is a person – it is “the LORD” from the first half of the verse.  He is invincible, impenetrable, and unable to be bribed or coerced.  He does not grow weary or impatient with my need for protection.  His protection is relentless, His provision is abundant, His shelter is warm, and His loyalty is promised.

This verse is a wooing verse.  It calls me from my beneficial exegetical observation and my healthy scriptural meditation to something even deeper — to seek God as my refuge in time of need so that I can experience His goodness with all the delightful sweetness of taste and all the brilliant color of sight.  It makes me long to know God intimately and to run to Him quickly and to trust Him without reservation.  I want to taste and see His goodness, and to be the man who is blessed because God is my shelter.

Christian Athletes, Public Faith, and the Exclusivity of Jesus

Tom Krattenmaker doesn’t mind if Christianesque sports stars start their postgame interviews with general gratitude to a general god.  But he does mind the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob being real, the Bible being true, and Jesus being King.  And he does mind that athletes like Tim Tebow talk like it.

In his recent op-ed piece for USA Today entitled “And I’d Like to Thank God Almighty,” the author of Onward Christian Athletes acknowledges that Christian athletes are often model citizens doing good things in their communities.  And he agrees that people of faith should feel the freedom to express their faith.  Yet he argues that there is a particular wing of “conservative Christianity” that is theologically narrow and subsequently divisive, and he is concerned (enough to write books and articles) that this brand of Jesus-following is promoted by some prominent athletes who believe things like the exclusivity of Jesus for salvation and the reality of hell for those who reject Him.

Krattenmaker highlights this target group throughout the article.  It’s “a brand of conservative Christianity,” “a particular version of conservative Christianity,” “a one-truth evangelical campaign,” “a far-right theology,” and “a Jesus-or-else message.”  Krattenmaker isn’t against just any so-called “Christian.”  In fact, he implicitly agrees with the “65% of American Christians” who “believe that many religions can lead to eternal life” and whose “pluralism is a defining and positive reality of American life.”  These make up “the majority of American Christians” who offer a “more generous conception of salvation.”

Sadly, even though Krattenmaker claims to have “researched and thought about Christianity in sports for the better part of a decade,” he fails colossally to even define a biblical ”Christian.”  This is understandable for the average guy with a blog and an opinion, but inexcusable for a credentialed journalist.  The primary source was certainly available to him, since it’s the most widely distributed piece of literature in the history of the printing press.  Maybe he gives a more accurate definition elsewhere, but he certainly doesn’t repeat it here, nor does he demonstrate any likelihood that he possesses such clarity.  This is more than unfortunate, because simply reading the primary source (the Bible) reveals that the Jesus-is-the-only-way message that Krattenmaker charicatures and then deplores is the actual message of Jesus, all over the gospels and from cover to cover in the New Testament.  He is the King, not an option or a view or an opinion, and those who proclaim His exclusivity do so in His name and in His stead.

The wonderful thing about the article is that Krattenmaker ultimately levels his sights at this central issue.  He objects, ”If their take on God and truth and life is the only right one — which their creed boldly states — everyone else is wrong.”  But the painful thing about the article is that Krattenmaker simultaneously misses his own claims to rightness.  Right in line with every other quasi-philosopher drinking from the postmodern well, he is blind to his own exclusivity.  He is the classic street-corner postmodernist – arguing against people who think they’re right while refusing to acknowledge that he also thinks he’s right.  Because if Krattenmaker’s take on God and truth and life is the only right one — which his article boldly states — everyone else is wrong.

Yet because he doesn’t recognize his own inherent (silent) claim to exclusivity, he can survive making startling concessions like this:  “Given the misbehavior and self-seeking that plague sports, who could doubt the benefit of bringing moral guidance and a broader perspective to locker rooms and clubhouses?”  On the surface, this sounds normal enough — a nice pat on the head for the token good that a few Christianized voices might bring to a locker room.  But it’s actually a groundless, backward, self-defeating statement in the context of the article.  How can Krattenmaker claim that “misbehavior” is wrong and that ”self-seeking” is bad, much less put any definition or authority to the “morality” and “perspective” that he seems to want multiplied among our nation’s athletes?  In other words, if no one is ultimately right or wrong, what’s the basis for Krattenmaker’s bold and exclusive statements about morality?  What authority does he have to make such claims?  Does he actually think he’s right?

The problem here is that Krattenmaker thinks he’s saying, “Everyone should be allowed to believe different things,” when he’s actually saying, “No one is allowed to believe that he’s actually right.”  And if that statement is true, then you can see why the postmodern parade is rated R — because the floats are always eating themselves.

All that being said, it would be shallow to blame this all on postmodernism.  This isn’t ultimately about the wholesale rejection of meta-narratives or the continuing surge of relativism or the established presence of a new intellectual mentality.  This is about exclusivity.  People didn’t like it in Jesus’ day, and they don’t like it in ours.  The royal message of the gospel, lest we forget, says that “Jesus is Lord.”  Not Caesar, not Pontius Pilate, not Herod the Great, not Tim Tebow, and not Tom Krattenmaker.  You don’t have to be postmodern to hate that.  You just have to be a child of Adam.

Wonderfully, the answer to our hatred of Jesus’ exclusivity is Jesus’ exclusivity.  Right before He said, “No one comes to the Father except through Me,” He said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6).  Both are statements of exclusivity.  But the door is slung wide open.  He is not the wall, but the way.  So because God is gracious and sent His Son, this is the most gloriously inclusive exclusivity the world has ever seen.  May Tom Krattenmaker come to see its glory in time to come.